Greek Numeration

System
 The Greek numbering system was
uniquely upon their alphabet.

 The Greek alphabet came from the

Phoenicians around 900 B.C.
 was an ancient civilization
composed of independent city-
states located along the coast of
the Mediterranean sea stretching
through what is now Syria,
Lebanon and northern Israel.
Attic Numerals
 began around 600 B.C

Ionic Numeras
 Began around 200 B.C
 The Attic (or Herodianic) system of numerals was
the first numeral system used in ancient Greece.

 "Attic"
refers to the Greek territory of Attica, while
"Herodianic" refers to Aelius Herodianus, a
grammarian of the 2nd century A.D. who described
the system in his writings.
 The number 1 was represented by | (a vertical bar), but
the other five symbols were Greek letters:
 5 was represented by Π (pi)—although this numeral
was often written with a short right tail, so it looked
similar to the Greek letter Γ (gamma).
 10 by Δ (delta)
 100 by Η (eta)
 1000 by Χ (chi)
 10,000 (called a Myriad) by Μ (mu)
Additive

Not positional

No zero
 This system used the 24 letters in
the Greek alphabet, as well as three other symbols:
the digamma, which represented 6, the koppa, which
represented 90, and the sampi, which represented
900.
Additive

Not Positional

No zero
 Symbols were the 24 letters of the 24 letters
of the Greek Alphabets and 3 obsolete
letters
 alphabetical 1-9

 Notice that 6 is represented by the symbol for the obsolete letter

digamma.

 alphabetical 10-90

 Notice that 90 is represented by the symbol for the obsolete letter koppa.
 alphabetical 100-900

 Notice that 900 is represented by the symbol for the

obsolete letter san.
Composite symbols were created to
overcome this problem. The numbers
between 1000 and 9000 were formed by
adding a subscript or superscript iota to the
symbols for 1 to 9.
Writing M below a numeral
indicated multiplying it by 10,000.
 The advantages of the Ionic system was that numbers
could be represented using only a few symbols.
 The main disadvantage to this system was that it was
harder to do arithmetic in Ionic numerals than it was
in the Attic system or using Roman numerals.
 https://mathlair.allfunandgames.ca/attic.php
 http://www-history.mcs.st-
and.ac.uk/HistTopics/Greek_numbers.html
 https://public.csusm.edu/aitken_html/mathhistory/Io
nicNumbers1.pdf
 https://mathlair.allfunandgames.ca/ionic.php